It is common to construct demountable partitions in office buildings from drywall panels. These panels are usually mounted onto vertical studs via edge fastening clips. Traditionally, these clips have been provided with prongs for attachment to the edges of the wall panel. The clips were in turn attached to the vertical studs by screws or nails. These prior clips were capable of mounting the wall panels to the supporting studs in a coplanar fashion such that the clips themselves remained hidden behind the edges of the wall panels. These wall panel clips, however, required the wall panels to be mounted to the supporting studs in a progressive fashion. Weinar, U.S. Pat. No. 4,221,095 discloses a typical wall assembly system requiring the progressive attachment of wall panels to their supporting studs, in which the clips are secured to studs by means of screws. Subsequently, clips adapted to clip onto the edges of the wall supporting studs were introduced. See e.g. Ragland, U.S. Pat. No. 4,377,060 and Wendt, U.S. Pat. No. 4,567,706, which both disclose wall fastening systems involving metal clips or fasteners which are provided with gripping flanges. Although these panel clips permitted the wall panels to be mounted to the studs in a manner permitting the easy disassembly of the wall panels, the clips often tended to slip off the supporting studs. These clips also required the wall panels to move laterally during their assembly. This significant hindrance in the assembly of partition walls, particularly at corners where lateral movement of wall panels is not possible.
Adams, U.S. Pat. No. 4,149,353 discloses a clip-type fastener that avoids some of the aforementioned problems, but the Adams fastener suffers from lack of gripping symmetry in penetrating the wall stud, and provides a resilient stud-gripping engagement along only one side thereof. This necessitates the sequential use of oppositely oriented Adams fasteners in a series of spaced stud apertures in order to balance the gripping engagement of the studs with the fasteners.